Lau Zhi Ying

On the court record

The reported matters cluster in insurance-coverage and fraudulent-claim litigation, with civil-procedure and appellate work, grounded in High Court judgments.

Lau Zhi Ying's reported matters are civil and heavily weighted towards insurance litigation, argued in the High Court and largely on the side of an insurer resisting coverage. Two of the decisions turn on the construction of policy conditions. In a claim on a construction all-risks policy for flood damage, the disputed question was whether clauses requiring compliance with a material-storage limit operated as warranties and conditions precedent to cover; appearing for the defendant insurer, the Court accepted that the relevant clauses were warranties and conditions precedent under the policy and held that the plaintiff had adduced insufficient evidence to shift the burden of proof. In a fire-insurance claim, the insurer repudiated liability on the ground that the fire was incendiary and deliberately set, or set with the insured's connivance, and that a fraudulent claim had been submitted; again appearing for the defendant, the Court dismissed the plaintiff's claim in its entirety and ordered the plaintiff to pay costs of RM80,000.

Civil procedure and appellate review complete the profile. In a striking-out application under Order 18 rule 19(1) of the Rules of Court 2012, measured against the plain-and-obvious threshold in the Bandar Builder line, he acted for a defendant seeking to strike out a pleading. In an appeal from the Sessions Court, the question was whether the appellate court should interfere with findings of fact where no error of principle or misapprehension had been shown; appearing for the respondent, the Court found no compelling grounds for interference and dismissed the appeal with costs of RM10,000. A common feature of the insurance matters is the disciplined use of policy construction, warranties and the burden of proof to resist coverage, so that a claim failed not on sympathy but on the insured's inability to bring itself within the terms of the contract or to displace an allegation of a fraudulent claim. Across these decisions the reported work sits in insurance coverage disputes, fraudulent-claim defences and civil-procedure and appellate questions, argued in the High Court, frequently on the side of the insurer.